- School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading
Welcome!
Why study swearing?
When COVID hit during Chris’ undergraduate degree, he found himself with a problem. The pain study he was going to run was no longer possible. He and his project partner didn’t mind what they did for a dissertation, as long as it was fun. Chris came across Richard Stephens’ study showing that swearing can increase pain tolerance and things have just grown from there.
What started as a back-up project has now become a calling. The more Chris read, the more he realised just how little we seemed to know about swearing, despite it being a universal behaviour, and how many questions there are still to ask. Swearing can be both expressive and/or receptive, you can either say, write, or gesture the swear word yourself or you can see or hear someone else swearing. From a research perspective, though, they seem to always be treated independently. Which seems odd because most swear words put out into the world get seen or heard by someone!
While it may not seem the most “scientific” topic, and Chris does get imposter syndrome from time-to-time, the research, especially around expressive swearing, definitely connects with people. You really can see in their eyes the cogs turning in their head. Everybody has an opinion, a question, an idea as to why people swear, what words people use, what effects it can have. Very few other psychological topics grab people’s attention quite in the same way as swearing.
Chris is now completing a PhD within the University of Reading’s School of Psychology, working out of the specialist pain lab within the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics. His research digs into the emotional effects of swearing on pain. But, rather than chasing the mechanisms underlying any effect, he’s trying to solidify the foundations first. Based on the idea that it’s better to walk before you run, his thesis is asking questions around whether swearing works across different pain types, or for all swear words, as well as trying to test whether knowledge discovered via receptive swearing may help explain the findings reported for expressive swearing.
Currently, he’s run a study to test whether swearing affects risk-taking behaviour, explored if hearing swear words disrupts time perception, and carried out a vast meta-analysis that sifted through 13,000 papers on the link between swearing and pain. He’s also halfway through a four-year project collecting word ratings from participants to see how age, gender, and native language shape the way people perceive swear words. He has also developed a novel tasks, designed to significantly frustrate participants, to allow an investigation into whether expressive swearing helps alleviate frustration, or whether it’s just makes pain more tolerable.
Swearing is a universal part of language and a behaviour engaged by millions of people every day, but it remains scientifically under-explored. It has a playful, humorous side, but also serious implications. You could argue that swearing might help patients cope with pain, but as one A&E doctor pointed out, that discounts the impact on the staff who have to hear it. Equally, swearing might make you seem more trustworthy in one context unprofessional and inappropriate in another.
This website is designed to provide you with further information about the research we carry out into the psychology of swearing. Specially, it provides details of Chris’ PhD, the studies being run, and gives you a chance to sign-up to take part in the research he conducts. We hope you enjoy reading.
Chris, Rich, and Phil
Did you know...?
Children can start to use swear words as early as the age of two and by the time they reach about 11 or 12 years old their “swear vocabulary” can be similar to that of adults (i.e., they’ve already learned both the words and when/where they’re socially acceptable).